The Joy Luck Club

In her gloved hands she held a large cream-colored box with foreign words written on top: "Fine English-Tailored Apparel, Tientsin. " I remember she had put the box down between us and told me: "Open it! Quickly! " She was breathless and smiling. I was so surprised by my mother's new strange manner, it was not until many years later, when I was using this box to store letters and photographs, that I wondered how my mother had known. Even though she had not seen me for many years, she had known that I would someday follow her and that I should wear a new dress when I did.

And when I opened that box, all my shame, my fears, they fell away. Inside was a new starch-white dress. It had ruffles at the collar and along the sleeves and six tiers of ruffles for a skirt. The box also contained white stockings, white leather shoes, and an enormous white hair bow, already shaped and ready to be fastened on with two loose ties.

Everything was too big. My shoulders kept slipping out of the large neck hole. The waist was big enough to fit two of me. But I did not mind. She did not mind. I raised my arms and stood perfectly still. She drew out pins and thread and with little tucks here and there stuffed in the loose materials, then filled the toes of the shoes with tissue paper, until everything fit. Wearing those clothes, I felt as if I had grown new hands and feet and I would now have to learn to walk in a new way.

And then my mother became somber again. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching as our boat drew closer and closer to the dock.

"An-mei, now you are ready to start your new life. You will live in a new house. You will have a new father. Many sisters. Another little brother. Dresses and good things to eat. Do you think all this will be enough to be happy? "

I nodded quietly, thinking about the unhappiness of my brother in Ningpo. My mother did not say anything more about the house, or my new family, or my happiness. And I did not ask any questions, because now a bell was sounding and a ship's steward was calling our arrival in Tientsin. My mother gave quick instructions to our porter, pointed to our two small trunks and handed him money, as if she had done this every day of her life. And then she carefully opened another box and pulled out what looked to be five or six dead foxes with open beady eyes, limp paws, and fluffy tails. She put this scary sight around her neck and shoulders, then grabbed my hand tight as we moved down the aisle with the crowd of people.

There was no one at the harbor to meet us. My mother walked slowly down the rampway, through the baggage platform, looking nervously from side to side.

"An-mei, come! Why are you so slow! " she said, her voice filled with fear. I was dragging my feet, trying to stay in those too-large shoes as the ground beneath me swayed. And when I was not watching which way my feet were moving, I looked up and saw everybody was in a hurry, everybody seemed unhappy: families with old mothers and fathers, all wearing dark, somber colors, pushing and pulling bags and crates of their life's possessions; pale foreign ladies dressed like my mother, walking with foreign men in hats; rich wives scolding maids and servants following behind carrying trunks and babies and baskets of food.

We stood near the street, where rickshaws and trucks came and went. We held hands, thinking our own thoughts, watching people arriving at the station, watching others hurrying away. It was late morning, and although it seemed warm outside, the sky was gray and clouding over.

After a long time of standing and seeing no one, my mother sighed and finally shouted for a rickshaw.

During this ride, my mother argued with the rickshaw puller, who wanted extra cash to carry the two of us and our luggage. Then she complained about the dust from the ride, the smell of the street, the bumpiness of the road, the lateness of the day, the ache in her stomach. And when she had finished with these laments, she turned her complaints to me: a spot on my new dress, a tangle in my hair, my twisted stockings. I tried to win back my mother, pointing to ask her about a small park, a bird flying above us, a long electric streetcar that passed us sounding its horn.

But she became only more cross and said: "An-mei, sit still. Do not look so eager. We are only going home. "

And when we finally arrived home, we were both exhausted.

I knew from the beginning our new home would not be an ordinary house. My mother had told me we would live in the household of Wu Tsing, who was a very rich merchant. She said this man owned many carpet factories and lived in a mansion located in the British Concession of Tientsin, the best section of the city where Chinese people could live. We lived not too far from Paima Di, Racehorse Street, where only Westerners could live. And we were also close to little shops that sold only one kind of thing: only tea, or only fabric, or only soap.

The house, she said, was foreign-built; Wu Tsing liked foreign things because foreigners had made him rich. And I concluded that was why my mother had to wear foreign-style clothes, in the manner of newly rich Chinese people who liked to display their wealth on the outside.

And even though I knew all this before I arrived, I was still amazed at what I saw.

The front of the house had a Chinese stone gate, rounded at the top, with big black lacquer doors and a threshold you had to step over. Within the gates I saw the courtyard and I was surprised. There were no willows or sweet-smelling cassia trees, no garden pavilions, no benches sitting by a pond, no tubs of fish. Instead, there were long rows of bushes on both sides of a wide brick walkway and to each side of those bushes was a big lawn area with fountains. And as we walked down the walkway and got closer to the house, I saw this house had been built in the Western style. It was three stories high, of mortar and stone, with long metal balconies on each floor and chimneys at every corner.

When we arrived, a young servant woman ran out and greeted my mother with cries of joy. She had a high scratchy voice: "Oh Taitai, you've already arrived! How can this be? " This was Yan Chang, my mother's personal maid, and she knew how to fuss over my mother just the right amount. She had called my mother Taitai, the simple honorable title of Wife, as if my mother were the first wife, the only wife.